The integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. In the course of IC evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased. This scaling down process generally provides benefits by increasing production efficiency and lowering associated costs. Such scaling down has also increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized, similar developments in IC manufacturing are needed. For example, IC manufacturing typically uses multiple process steps that require many tools, both production and support related, such that IC manufacturers often focus on monitoring a tools hardware and associated process to ensure and maintain stability, repeatability, and yields in IC manufacturing. Such tool monitoring may be achieved by fault detection and classification (FDC) systems, which monitor tools during processing and identify faults in the tools that causes the processing to stray from that which is expected. However, conventional tool monitoring systems and methods provide little correlation between identified faults in the tools and a root cause for the identified faults. Accordingly, although existing approaches have been generally adequate for their intended purposes, they have not been entirely satisfactory in all respects.